Détente Between China and India The Delicate Balance of Geopolitics in Asia Willem van Kemenade July 2008 NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ‘CLINGENDAEL’ CIP-Data Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Van Kemenade, Willem Détente Between China and India; The Delicate Balance of Geopolitics in Asia, Willem van Kemenade, The Hague, Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ Clingendael Diplomacy Papers No. 16 ISBN: 978-90-5031-127-4 Desktop publishing by Desiree Davidse Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael Clingendael Diplomatic Studies Programme Clingendael 7 2597 VH The Hague Telephone +31(0)70 - 3746605 Telefax +31(0)70 - 3746666 P.O. Box 93080 2509 AB The Hague Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.clingendael.nl The Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ is an independent institute for research, training and public information on international affairs. It publishes the results of its own research projects and the monthly Internationale Spectator and offers a broad range of courses and conferences covering a wide variety of international issues. It also maintains a library and documentation centre. © Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright-holders. Clingendael Institute, P.O. Box 93080, 2509 AB The Hague, The Netherlands. Acknowledgements Comparative studies of the politics and economics of the two giants of Asia, China and India have become a booming academic industry in recent years and I have made my modest contribution to this process. After doing a number of business briefings for major corporations and lectures at business schools in China and Europe (see: http://www.willemvk.org), I decided in 2007 to do a broader study of the strategic relationship between the two major rising powers, their rivalries and their complex interdependencies in the South- and Southeast Asia regions. After monitoring events in India over the last five years for the lectures, I made a three month research trip to India from September through December 2007. I express my appreciation to the Netherlands Ambassador Eric Niehe for graciously hosting a lunch for me at the outset of my visit with half a dozen of India’s best known experts on China, regional politics and security and to Robert Schipper of the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency for offering me hospitality at his spacious house in Anand Niketan. I owe much to India’s leading thinktanks, the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies – Major-General Dipankar Banerjee – and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses for organizing roundtable discussions and multiple tete-a- tete sessions with their experts. I especially mention Sujit Dutta, the Head of the China & East Asia Programme, Prof. Phuntchok Stobdan, senior Tibet and 1 Central Asia specialist and Abanti Bhattacharya, Tibet and China specialist. Much appreciation is also owed to Prof. Madhu Bhalla of Delhi University, Prof. Srikanth Kondapalli of Jawaharlal Nehru University and diplomatic commentator Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar for spending many hours of fruitful discussions with me. In Beijing, I had several highly instructive meetings with leading Chinese India-specialists Ma Jiali and Hu Shisheng of the Centre for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) and Rong Ying of the China Institute of International Studies. In January 2008, I moved on to Washington DC, to take up a stint as a Visiting Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies to work on my next book on the EU-US-China Global Strategic Grand Triangle. Special thanks to Professor David M. Lampton, Dean of the Faculty and Director of China Studies at SAIS for offering me facilities there. Since Washington is the Rome plus Mecca of all international studies, I still continued to work intermittently on my China-India book for several months. I have benefited greatly from my frequent conversations with Prof. Pieter Bottelier (Chinese Economy), Walter Andersen, Associate Director for South Asia Studies at SAIS, Hasan Askari Rizvi, Visiting Professor from Pakistan, Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Expert in Asian Regional Security issues and Adviser to Senator John McCain, Professors Harry Harding and David Shambaugh of The George Washington University, and eminent Burma specialists Prof. David Steinberg of Georgetown University and Ambassador Priscilla Clapp of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Finally, a note of gratitude to Professor Jan Melissen and the staff of the Clingendael Diplomatic Studies Programme and Clingendael Asia Studies, especially Desiree Davidse for facilitating and finalizing this project. Washington DC, June 2008. Willem van Kemenade 2 Contents Introduction 5 1. Regional Power India: Challenged by China 13 2. China–India Relations: Tibet in the 1950s and the Border Issue 31 3. The China–Tibet Dialogue: Real Autonomy or Sinification? 55 4. The China–Pakistan Axis 85 5. A Russia–India–China Triangle: ‘Primakov’s Triangle’? 115 6. A New Era in India–US Relations 141 7. China, India and the Coming ‘Transition’ in Burma 169 8. China and India: Partners and Competitors in the World Economy 193 Epilogue 219 3 4 Introduction Indian and Chinese statesmen of the 20th and early 21st century have ruminated at length on the grand vision of their two ancient Asian civilizations and now resurgent great neighboring countries, becoming close partners, leading Asia and the world at large. After Indian independence in 1947 India emerged as the new leading power of Asia with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as the authentic voice of the whole born-again Orient. Nehru had visited the Soviet Union in 1927 and China in 1939. He then told Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek: “More and more, I think of India and China pulling together in the future”. During the 1950s India and China were in de Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai (India and China are brothers) honeymoon but it didn’t last long. By 1959 the two were at odds over the flight to India of the Dalai Lama and his political asylum there together with his government-in-exile and there was escalating acrimony over the unsettled border that the two had inherited from the British Empire. The two fought a brief war in the Himalayas, which India lost and which shattered the vision of a common destiny for decades to come. Yet, the two did not become implacable enemies and just withdrew behind the lines of actual control in cold peace. India was a neutral, non-aligned country, leaning towards the Soviet Union and China knew if it pushed India too hard it would risk a crisis or even military conflict with Moscow or drive India in the arms of the United States. China had succeeded in 5 downgrading India as the leading power of the non-aligned Afro-Asian world and during the 1960s and beyond forged a geo-political alliance with India’s adversary Pakistan, to keep India in check, have a backdoor to the outside world and outrun the US naval blockade of the Chinese Pacific east-coast. The China-Pakistan Axis became a strategic alliance, but China never intervened on Pakistan’s behalf in its wars with India, neither the second Kashmir War in 1965 nor the Bangladesh Independence War in 1971. Chairman Mao Zedong himself had made his own minor peace gesture, when on Labour Day, May 1, 1970 he turned to the Indian Charge d’Affaires Brajesh Mishra and told him: “India is a great country and the Indian people are a great people. Chinese and Indian people ought to live as friends, they cannot always quarrel”.1 After Bangladeshi Independence, China actually withdrew political support for the Pakistani position of self-determination for Kashmir and endorsed the Simla Agreement, signed in July 1972 by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, binding the two countries ’to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations’. It also cemented the Line of Control as something close to a permanent border. The agreement has been the basis of all subsequent bilateral talks between India and Pakistan, and equally important of all Chinese official pronouncements on the conflict. The next providential statement by a top Chinese leader was Deng Xiaoping’s in 1988 when he met with the young visiting Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, the first top-level visit since the 1962 border war. Deng told Gandhi: “If there should be an Asian Age in the next Century, then it could only be realized after both India and China become developed economies”. It took another 15 years before relations between the two countries really started improving and only after India had embarked on ‘playing the US card’. The Bush administration was cultivating India as a strategic partner for the containment of China, a concept that was supported by the Indian right, but still conflicted with India’s deeply rooted tradition of a non-aligned and independent foreign policy. By 2003, the Chinese realized that if India was so adept at playing the America card with them, why wouldn’t China itself have its own direct, regular high-level dialogue with the Indians. Since 2003 four reciprocal visits of heads of state and government have taken place. The first one of prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2003 ushered in unprecedented optimism that the long-standing border dispute would be solved immediately. “So far, the talks were limited to lower-ranking officials who could not take decisions. It will not be so now and (high-level) representatives of the two countries will resolve the issue,” Vajpayee said. India appointed national security advisor Brajesh Mishra as its special representative while China 1) Jairam Ramesh, Making Sense of Chindia, Reflections on China and India, New Delhi 2005, p.